I was quite successful with hatching quails from my family of quails last year and at the start of this year. That family has just turned one, and six weeks ago I had a hatch where only about a quarter of the eggs were viable at lockdown. I know that fertility starts to drop after about a year, but this seems excessive.

I've also tried hatching from their daughters that are now six months old, and a male I borrowed which they think is about 1. None of these eggs have been viable on lockdown, I left them in just in case, but none hatched. I suspect the male might be infertile, but that seems like a bit of a coincidence and I'm worried it something I'm doing, though I don't think I've changed anything.

They were all kept inside with artificial light over winter, so they have been laying right through. Does fertility drop that much after one year? Do you have any other suggestions as to why this might be happening?

Also, I would like to buy a male Japanese Quail, preferably Pharaoh in colour if possible. I live in Hamilton, so around that area please. Or I have a six week old Tuxedo male that I can swap.

Hi QuailObsessed,I used to breed Japanese quail and found that it worked best to buy and hatch fertile eggs from different sources to keep fertility up. I think there's a lot of inbreeding going on and that has an impacton the fertility rates. There are lots of fertile eggs for sale on TM and quail mature so fast that it's almost more efficient to buy fertile eggs than to look for another male. Just my thoughts.

Thanks for the reply. I was planning on buying some fertile eggs next, but wanted to do a hatch with a different male first to make sure that it's not something I'm doing wrong during incubating that I haven't noticed. My first family of quails was hatched from eggs I got from Christchurch, but are two different strains that are definitely not brother and sisters. So their daughters are definitely not related to the male, but the male is from a breeder that I am a bid dubious about.